--- title: Opening, part 1 — The grateful elephant · full text with trees · page 2 description: Opening, part 1, «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: _The Grateful Elephant_ --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/1/page/2/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The grateful elephant](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/) / Opening, part 1 # Opening, part 1 · page 2 [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/1/) **2** Seven days after Gotama was born, his mother died, and he was brought up by his aunt and step-mother.[195](../../195/ "tree and pragmatics") When he was nineteen years old, he married his own cousin.[196](../../196/ "tree and pragmatics") For ten years he lived a life of ease, in the enjoyment of all the comforts and luxuries which riches and high position could give him.[197](../../197/ "tree and pragmatics") When he was twenty-nine years old, a change came over him.[198](../../198/ "tree and pragmatics") For many centuries, it has been a common belief in India that when a human being dies, he is at once born again.[199](../../199/ "tree and pragmatics") If he has lived a good life, he will be born again on earth as the child of a king or of a rich man, or in one of the heavens as a god.[200](../../200/ "tree and pragmatics") If he has lived an evil life, he will be born again as a ghost, or as an animal, or in some place of torment.[201](../../201/ "tree and pragmatics") According to this belief, every person has been born and has lived and died so many times that it would be impossible to count the number.[202](../../202/ "tree and pragmatics") Indeed, so far back into the past does this series of lives extend that it is impossible even to imagine a beginning of the series.[203](../../203/ "tree and pragmatics") What is more to the point, in each of these lives every person has endured much suffering and misery.[204](../../204/ "tree and pragmatics") Said the Buddha: “In weeping over the death of sons and daughters and other dear ones, every person, in the course of his past lives, has shed tears more abundant than all the water contained in the four great oceans.”[205](../../205/ "tree and pragmatics") And again: “The bones left by a single person in the course of his past lives would form a pile so huge that were all the mountains to be gathered up and piled in a heap, that heap of mountains would appear as nothing beside it.”[206](../../206/ "tree and pragmatics") And again: “The head of every person has been cut off so many times in the course of his past lives, either as a human being or as an animal, as to cause him to shed blood more abundant than all the water contained in the four great oceans.”[207](../../207/ "tree and pragmatics") Nothing more terrible than this can be imagined.[208](../../208/ "tree and pragmatics") Yet for many centuries it has been a common belief in India.[209](../../209/ "tree and pragmatics") Wise men taught that there was a way of escape, a way of salvation.[210](../../210/ "tree and pragmatics") If a person wished to avoid repeated lives of suffering and misery, he must leave home and family and friends, become a monk, and devote himself to fasting, bodily torture, and meditation.[211](../../211/ "tree and pragmatics") The Buddhist Scriptures tell us that when Gotama was twenty-nine years old, he saw for the first time an Old Man, a Sick Man, a Dead Man, and a Monk.[212](../../212/ "tree and pragmatics") The thought that in the course of his past lives he had endured old age, sickness, and death, times without number, terrified him, and he resolved to become a monk.[213](../../213/ "tree and pragmatics") Leaving home and wife and son, he devoted himself for six years to fasting, bodily torture, and meditation.[214](../../214/ "tree and pragmatics") Finally he became convinced that fasting and bodily torture were not the way of salvation, and abandoned the struggle.[215](../../215/ "tree and pragmatics") One night he had a wonderful experience.[216](../../216/ "tree and pragmatics") First he saw the entire course of his past lives.[217](../../217/ "tree and pragmatics") Next he saw the fate after death of all living beings.[218](../../218/ "tree and pragmatics") Finally he came to understand the cause of human suffering and the cure for it.[219](../../219/ "tree and pragmatics") Thus it was that he became Buddha, the Awakened, the Enlightened.[220](../../220/ "tree and pragmatics") He saw that the cause of rebirth and suffering was craving for worldly pleasures and life and riches.[221](../../221/ "tree and pragmatics") He saw that if this craving were uprooted, rebirth and suffering would come to an end.[222](../../222/ "tree and pragmatics") He saw that this craving could be uprooted by right belief, right living, and meditation.[223](../../223/ "tree and pragmatics") For forty-five years the Buddha journeyed from place to place, preaching and teaching.[224](../../224/ "tree and pragmatics") He founded an order of monks and nuns, and won many converts.[225](../../225/ "tree and pragmatics") He lived to be eighty years old.[226](../../226/ "tree and pragmatics") Missionaries carried his teachings from India to Ceylon and Burma and China and Tibet and Japan.[227](../../227/ "tree and pragmatics") In a few hundred years the religion of the Buddha had spread over the whole of Asia.[228](../../228/ "tree and pragmatics") Hundreds of millions of human beings have accepted his teachings.[229](../../229/ "tree and pragmatics") In at least two respects, the teachings of the Buddha were quite remarkable.[230](../../230/ "tree and pragmatics") In the first place, he insisted on the virtue of moderation.[231](../../231/ "tree and pragmatics") He urged upon his hearers to avoid the two extremes of a life devoted to fasting and self-torture, and a life of self-indulgence.[232](../../232/ "tree and pragmatics") In the second place, he taught that a man must love his neighbor as himself, returning good for evil and love for hatred.[233](../../233/ "tree and pragmatics") But this was not all.[234](../../234/ "tree and pragmatics") He taught men to love all living creatures without respect of kind or person.[235](../../235/ "tree and pragmatics") He taught men not to injure or kill any living creature, whether a human being or an animal, even in self-defense.[236](../../236/ "tree and pragmatics") All war, according to the teaching of the Buddha, is unholy.[237](../../237/ "tree and pragmatics") In the course of time it came to be believed that Gotama had become Buddha as the fruit of good deeds performed in countless previous states of existence, especially deeds of generosity.[238](../../238/ "tree and pragmatics") At any time, had he so desired, he might have uprooted craving for worldly pleasures and life and riches by meditation, and thus have escaped the sufferings of repeated states of existence.[239](../../239/ "tree and pragmatics") But this he deemed an unworthy course.[240](../../240/ "tree and pragmatics") Out of pity and compassion and friendliness for living creatures, he preferred to be reborn again and again, to suffer and to die again and again, in order that, by the accumulated merit of good works, he might himself become enlightened and thus be able to enlighten others.[241](../../241/ "tree and pragmatics") In comparison with the career of the Future Buddha, devoted to the performance of good works, unselfish, generous to the point of sacrificing his own body and blood,--the career of the monk, isolated from the world, selfish, seeking by meditation to uproot craving for worldly pleasures and life and riches, seemed low and mean.[242](../../242/ "tree and pragmatics") The disciple began to imitate his Master.[243](../../243/ "tree and pragmatics") Thus began the Higher Career or Vehicle of Mahāyāna or Catholic Buddhism, as distinguished from the Lower Career or Vehicle of the more primitive Hīnayāna Buddhism of the Pāli texts.[244](../../244/ "tree and pragmatics") Thus did the quest of Buddhahood supplant the quest of Nibbāna.[245](../../245/ "tree and pragmatics") This development took place long before the beginning of the Christian era.[246](../../246/ "tree and pragmatics") Gotama Buddha made frequent use of similes, allegories, parables, fables, and other stories, to illustrate his teachings.[247](../../247/ "tree and pragmatics") His example was imitated by his followers, and in the course of time hundreds and hundreds of stories were attributed to him on general principles.[248](../../248/ "tree and pragmatics") Most of these stories were, in their original form, nothing but simple folk-tales, many of them of great antiquity.[249](../../249/ "tree and pragmatics") Parallels and variants are found in the Mahābhārata, the Panchatantra, Bidpai’s Fables, the Hitopadesha, the Kathāsaritsāgara, and other fiction-collections, especially those of the Jains.[250](../../250/ "tree and pragmatics") Of the twenty-six stories contained in this book, of eight of which two versions are given, eleven stories or versions of stories (6, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17 \_a\_, 18 \_a\_, 19 \_a\_, 20 \_a\_, 23 \_a\_, 24 \_a\_) are taken from the oldest canonical texts of the Buddhist Sacred Scriptures.[251](../../251/ "tree and pragmatics") Of these eleven stories, the first nine are said to have been related by Gotama himself, the last two being attributed to the Buddhist sage Kumāra Kassapa.[252](../../252/ "tree and pragmatics") It is highly probable that the tradition embodied in the texts regarding these eleven stories is correct.[253](../../253/ "tree and pragmatics") We may therefore feel quite certain that such remarkable parables as \_Brahmadatta and the prince\_ (6), \_Blind men and elephant\_ (13), and \_The birds\_ (16) were actually related by Gotama himself, in substantially the same form as that in which we now have them.[254](../../254/ "tree and pragmatics") It is not at all unlikely that such a parable as \_Brahmadatta and Mallika\_ (8) was also related by Gotama, but of this we cannot be certain.[255](../../255/ "tree and pragmatics") [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/1/) **2** - ← previous: [page 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/1/) - next →: [Opening, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/2/) - ↑ back to [The grateful elephant](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/)